<p>In this thesis, I explore if Latvia has experienced, during the last ten years, a change in identity and threat perception that could allow for the building of a “cooperative security community” in Northern Europe. Recent constructivist researches contend that such change is in progress in neighboring Estonia. This research, performed through a discourse analysis of political elite’s speeches, reveals the presence – explained by the concept of interim inconsequentiality - of two opposite identity/security discourses. I link the first, inclusive, discourse to Latvia’s Western socialization, but not to a change in identity, as I contend that both threat images and identity have been instrumentalized for the sake of the accession strategy. As for the second, exclusionary, discourse that shows a persistent distrust of both Russia and the ethnic Russian minorities, and is the more prevalent in terms of political behavior, I link it to Latvia’s identity as a small ethnic nation vulnerable to external pressures - an identity strengthened during the period by Russia’s behavior. I verify this thesis by exposing the exclusionary discourse’s salience on the EU integration issue. I conclude that the period of reference, far from resolving the security dilemma, has, on the contrary, reinforced it.</p>

<p>This thesis examines the concept of legitimacy and its evolution over time in the context of the banking sector of the transition economy of Latvia, where Swedish banks are the dominant player. After an economic boom starting at the turn of the millennia, which was to a great extent financed by the Swedish banks, the Latvian economy has now completely turned around, in the wake of numerous unanswered signs of overheating and the global economic crisis. Although they acted within legal limits, the Swedish banks and their behavior have become the object of criticism in Latvia as well as in Sweden. To study the evolution of the legitimacy granted by their stakeholders, we make use of Suchman's legitimacy theory and rely on a mix of interviews and secondary data to obtain an overview of the events that occurred and understand what the public opinion is regarding these. We then propose an empirical framework to define the aspects of legitimacy that have been damaged, before suggesting strategies to repair it. Our main conclusions are that cognitive and moral legitimacy are the types that were harmed the most, although some ways exist to repair this damage. The results also show that the processes of legitimation are somewhat different in the case of a transition economy, but that the general public's expectations from the banking sector remain similar to that of Western countries. Furthermore, it seems pointless to try to seek a scapegoat for what went wrong; instead, it would be more useful to look for means to prevent this type of events from repeating in the future.</p>

This thesis examines the concept of legitimacy and its evolution over time in the context of the banking sector of the transition economy of Latvia, where Swedish banks are the dominant player. After an economic boom starting at the turn of the millennia, which was to a great extent financed by the Swedish banks, the Latvian economy has now completely turned around, in the wake of numerous unanswered signs of overheating and the global economic crisis. Although they acted within legal limits, the Swedish banks and their behavior have become the object of criticism in Latvia as well as in Sweden. To study the evolution of the legitimacy granted by their stakeholders, we make use of Suchman's legitimacy theory and rely on a mix of interviews and secondary data to obtain an overview of the events that occurred and understand what the public opinion is regarding these. We then propose an empirical framework to define the aspects of legitimacy that have been damaged, before suggesting strategies to repair it. Our main conclusions are that cognitive and moral legitimacy are the types that were harmed the most, although some ways exist to repair this damage. The results also show that the processes of legitimation are somewhat different in the case of a transition economy, but that the general public's expectations from the banking sector remain similar to that of Western countries. Furthermore, it seems pointless to try to seek a scapegoat for what went wrong; instead, it would be more useful to look for means to prevent this type of events from repeating in the future.

In the early 2000s when several Central and East European countries (CEECs) negotiated their accession to the European Union (EU), they introduced foreign aid policy despite most of them being aid recipient countries at the time. This thesis seeks to explain the evolution of foreign aid policy in two Central and Eastern European countries that took divergent paths in adopting the policy, Slovenia and Latvia. While Slovenia evolved into a relatively active donor country among the CEECs, Latvia’s aid policy developed relatively slowly and aid allocations were smaller. The thesis approaches this subject from the perspective of the ‘Europeanisation East’ literature that seeks to explain policy adoption in the CEECs in terms of EU influence. The literature is divided on how to explain the policy adoption processes in the CEECs. Rationalists, on the one hand, stress the role played by external incentives, in particular the conditions the EU imposed on the CEECs for them to be admitted to the EU, known as EU conditionality. Rationalists also note the role of domestic veto players who can delay or even stop adoption of the policy if it incurs high adoption costs upon them. Constructivists, on the other hand, explain policy adoption in terms of identification and social influence, policy resonance, or the presence of influential norm entrepreneurs. In an important study, Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2005) concluded that most of the policy adoption processes can be explained by the overwhelming influence of EU conditionality, thus downplaying constructivist explanations. This thesis examines whether their finding can be applied to the adoption of foreign aid policy in the preaccession period (1998-2004). It focuses on the role of EU as well as domestic factors in the policy adoption processes. It then explores what factors account for further developments in the policy adoption processes in the period after the CEECs acceded to the EU (2004-2010). The empirical basis of this study consists of a series of interviews with policy makers and civil society representatives in the two countries. The findings in these interviews have been checked against and triangulated with an encompassing examination of policy documents and archival material. The main findings about the pre-accession period indicate that EU conditionality indeed played an important role in foreign aid policy adoption, but so did identification and social influence. Hence policy adoption costs and the efforts of veto players could not delay policy adoption. In the post-accession period, it is argued here, the further policy adoption processes can largely be explained by identification and social influence. Nevertheless, veto players and adoption costs, as well as policy resonance, did emerge as constraining factors in the policy processes. All in all, the thesis argues that the policy adoption processes can be explained best by a combination of both Constructivist and Rationalist theories and that role of domestic factors should not be neglected in research into EU influence on the new member states.

This thesis examines the impact of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania&rsquo / s European accession process on the Russian oriented citizenship policies and laws of these states from a comparative perspective. The thesis also explores the impact of communist heritage and the construction of the post-communist state order within the context of minority rights / in addition to the consistency of the citizenship laws in the Baltic states with the European Union norms, which require the respect for and protection of minorities. The main argument of this thesis is that notwithstanding the fact that the European accession process has promoted minority rights in the three Baltic states significantly, the ethnic Russians in the Baltic states have been partially accommodated during the Baltic states&rsquo / accession into the EU. The ethnic Russians have not been entirely accommodated due to Baltic states&rsquo / fear from potential influence of the Russian Federation over the ethnic Russians in these Baltic states.

This study investigates the impact that Latvian exile literature has had on research in Latvia between 1992 and 2006. Latvian exile literature refers to the publications that were authored and published by Latvians who emigrated to Western countries after World War II and were issued between 1945 and 1991. Mixed methods research was conducted, incorporating citation analysis, questionnaires and interviews. Nine subject fields from the social sciences, arts and humanities were examined: philosophy and psychology, religion and theology, political science, education, folklore and ethnography, the arts, linguistics, literature, history. For the citation analysis, 33,866 citations from 1241 publications were collected. In the survey, 79 questionnaires were received from Latvian researchers and 31 questionnaires from the librarians working in Latvian academic, special and the main regional libraries. After the data analyses of citations and questionnaires were conducted, the results were presented to 15 researchers in Latvia (experts in their subject fields) for their assessment and comments. The overall results show that Latvian exile literature has had the greatest impact on research in folklore, history and literature. Exile impact was observed through both exile publications and communication with exile people. It appears that in other disciplines exile literature has had little or no impact. The reasons for this are thought to be: the lack of exile publications that could make an impact, and the irrelevance of existing publications to research in Latvia. In general, exile academic publications have been the most influential on research. The citation results also demonstrate the impact that restrictions of the soviet period (1945-1991) had on the research in Latvia, particularly through the double obsolescence of citations in all subject fields.

The purpose of this study was to find out how swedish newspapers writes about Lettland during 2005-2009, who gets to speak in media, which key words being used, and if the news articles content changes over the years. As a basis for my discussion I’ve used Stuart Hall's theories for representation and language. In the same litterature, Hall presents theories for stereotypes and power from different researchers which I have studied for this study. I’ve also used Van Ginnekens theory about who may be heard in media. Finally I have used Fairclogh’s theory for discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis as method for this qualitative study.   I studied Swedish newspapers published 2005-2009. Both metropolitan newspapers and local press. To get a broad picture of a possible Swedish media image, I chose in my investigation to include both news stories and what I call "thought journalism” made up of editorials and columns. I categorized all the items on the basis of year of publication, content and ideology.  I came to the conclusion that Swedish newspapers during the years 2005-2009 writes about three different topics. Latvia’s economic situation, political discontent or Swedes initiative to help the poor Latvian people. With the critical discourse analysis I found a reason for Swedens generosity with loans to the Latvian gouvernment, which is Swedens own economical intrests in Latvia.

Baigiamajame darbe apžvelgiu mokesčių sistema Lietuvoje ir Latvijoje, analizuoju pagrindinius mokesčius, kadangi mokesčiais Lietuvoje ir Latvijoje, taip pat ir kitose valstybėse surenkama dauguma valstybės pajamų. Baigiamajame darbe išskiriami tokie aspektai: istorinė mokesčių apžvalga, apmokestinimo principai, mokesčių klasifikacija, pagrindiniu Lietuvos Respublikos mokesčių įvertinimas. Panaudodama Latvijos ir Lietuvos teisės aktus, kitą reikalingą medžiagą ir surinkus duomenis apie į biudžetą sumokėtus mokesčius, sulyginu ir išanalizuoju Latvijos ir Lietuvos pagrindinius mokesčius. T.y. gyventojų pajamų mokestį, kurį jau seniai reikėjo mažinti, nes iš esmės gyventojų pajamoms tenka labai didelė mokesčių našta, pelno mokestį, kurio panaikinimas leistų įmonėms daugiau laiko, lėšų ir pastangų skirti vertės bei darbo vietų kūrimui, investicijoms, verslo plėtrai ir pridėtinės vertės mokestį, pamažu naikinat kitus mokesčius, palikti jį pagrindiniu biudžeto lėšų surinkimo įrankiu. / The final paper reviews the tax system in Lithuania and Latvia. Moreover it analyses the main revenue of the state budget. The aspects of the final paper are historical review of taxes, the principles of taxation, the classification of taxes and the assessment of the main taxes in Lithuania. The paper deals with comparison and analysis of the main taxes in Lithuania and Latvia. It is done on the grounds of the countries’ law and the data about the revenue. The later consists of researching the income fee that had to be diminished long time ago, because of the big taxes people have to pay. Moreover, it speaks about the profit fee, if which was abolished, the institutions would have more time, funds and efforts for making vacancies, investments and the growth of business.

Bakalauro baigiamajame darbe nagrinėjama Lietuvos ir Latvijos ekonominė konvergencija, siekiant tapti visateisėmis Europos Pinigų Sąjungos narėmis 2004-2010 m. laikotarpiu. Teorinėje darbo dalyje apibrėžta ekonominės konvergencijos koncepcija ekonominių teorijų ir Mastrichto sutarties kontekste; apibūdinta Euro zonos sąvoka bei pagrindiniai, narystei šioje sąjungoje būtini, ekonominės konvergencijos kriterijai. Praktinėje dalyje, atliekant Lietuvos ir Latvijos ekonominės konvergencijos analizę kiekybiniais ir kokybiniais tyrimo metodais, išanalizuotas ekonominis suartėjimas su Europos Sąjungos šalimis, remiantis BVP parametrais; atlikta makroekonominių rodiklių atitikimo konvergencijos kriterijams 2004-2010 m. analizė, atskleidžiant jų netolygumams turėjusius pagrindinius veiksnius ir ateities perspektyvas. Atliktos analizės rezultatai pagrindžia Lietuvos ir Latvijos ekonomines galimybes 2014 m. įsivesti eurą. Kiek palankesni šansai vertinami Lietuvos atveju, nors kita vertus, abi kaimyninės šalys, spėjama susidurs su valstybės finansų stabilizavimo ir infliacijos pažabojimo būtinybe. Ekonominė konvergencija vyksta ir yra tvari, tik jos mastus pakoregavo, labiausiai Lietuvą ir Latviją paveikusi ekonominė krizė. / In bachelor’s thesis is examining the Lithuanian and Latvian economic convergence in order to become full members of the European Monetary Union, 2004-2010 period. In the theoretical part the conception of economic convergence was defined in context of economic theory and the Maastricht Treaty; specified the euro area term and the basics economic convergence criteria, necessary for membership in the union. In the practical part analysing Lithuanian and Latvian economic convergence of both quantitative and qualitative research methods; analyzed the economic convergence with the European Union countries, on the basis GDP parameters; carried out the analysis of macroeconomic indicators compliance with the convergence criteria 2004-2010 period, revealing the inequalities which had the key factors and future prospects. The carried out analysis findings support Lithuanian and Latvian economic opportunities in 2014 to adopt the euro. How much more favorably rated the chances of Lithuania's case, although in the other hand, both neighboring countries will estimate to face with the stabilization of public finances and inflation targeting need. Economic convergence is taking place and is sustainable, but economic crisis, the most affected Lithuania and Latvia, have adjusted the scale.

Lietuva, Latvija ir Estija yra nacionalinės valstybės, pasižyminčios svarbiausiais modernaus valstybingumo atributais. Susikūrusios kaip tautinės valstybės, vėliau praradusios valstybingumą ir vėl jį atkūrusios, Baltijos šalys, pateko į sparčios globalizacijos ir regioninės integracijos pasaulį, veikiantį tradicines valstybingumo sampratas. „Vienos tautos, vienos kalbos, vienos kultūros, vienos valstybės“ pagrindu kurtos Lietuva, Latvija ir Estija į XXI amžių įžengė tęsdamos politinės bendruomenės formavimo projektus. Nacionalinė valstybė šiame darbe bus suprantama ne tik kaip teritorinis-politinis darinys, bet ir kaip jai lojalią politinę bendruomenę mėginantis kurti ir reprodukuoti socialinis aktorius. Šiam tikslui pasiekti nacionalinė valstybė naudojasi įvairiais instituciniais mechanizmais, pasitelkia ne tik juridines priemones, bet ir vertybinius argumentus. Pasinaudojant konstruktyvistine prieiga galima tirti politinės bendruomenės Baltijos šalyse formavimosi procesus, nustatyti esmines politikos sritis, veikiančias politinės bendruomenės sampratą ir palyginti jas platesnėje perspektyvoje įtraukiant „idealiuosius tipus“, istoriškai susiformavusius Vakarų šalyse. Istorija, kalba ir pilietybė – atributai, suteikiantys Baltijos šalių politinėms bendruomenėms turinį ir formą, todėl politikos jų atžvilgiu palyginimas parodo esminius skirtumus, lemiančius kitoniškas politinės bendruomenės sampratas Baltijos šalyse. Latvijoje ir Estijoje besiformuojantys modeliai panašūs į... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are nation-states that have all of the essential attributes of modern statehood. At first they had established themselves as ethnocultural nation-states, later lost their independence and then reemerged straight into the world which was hardly influenced by globalization and regional integration. The principle of “one nation, one language, one culture, one state” was already ideologically obsolete in modern discourse, however this was the basic principle on which the Baltic States were created. The nation-state in this thesis will be understood not only as territorial-political entity, but also as a social actor which puts efforts in political community building and reproducing it. In order to achieve these goals nation-state uses various institutional mechanisms; invokes legal remedies and arguments of inward values. Constructivist approach can help to investigate the processes of political community building in the Baltic States and to identify substantial fields of politics that determine the perception of political community. This also allows comparing them in a broader perspective – with “ideal types” of nation-state that appeared in the West. History, language and citizenship – these are the attributes that provide the political communities of the Baltic States with content and form; therefore the comparison of the policies towards those attributes indicates differences which determine different models of political community-shaping in the... [to full text]